In All Ways
by broomclosetkink
Summary: 100 situations, one word prompts. On-going, Fuugen, drabbles of varying lengths. There will be a little bit of everything, and one day I'm going to get them all done.
1. Disease

**A/N: If you don't think this how Mugen would see missing Fuu, then you're wrong. I probably had way too much fun writing this. **

**Disclaimer: I own nothing.**

**001. Disease**

Mugen is dying. Day by day the illness worsens, pumping through his veins and rotting his flesh, weakening him little-by-little. He wonders if anyone else can see it yet, or maybe smell it on him, like they can the whores and booze and blood.

He thinks of writing a death poem, but the idea nearly makes him choke on sake and spit out a lung laughing. Other men will leave fancy words behind, words that don't really mean _anything_, but he'll leave his own mark. Generations of punks will get shivers down their spine when they clear the clomp of heavy geta, and never know it was because long ago their ancestors were tormented by a demon wearing human skin. But Mugen's spirit will laugh, and even in hell feed on their reaction.

"Goddamn it," he grunts, head aching from these deep thoughts. He doesn't like thinking; not because he can't, but because he likes things to be simple. This ain't simple. Dying in slow degrees instead of in a battle, like he's always imagined. Head chopped off, sword in the gut, tanto in the heart, being blown up. But they've thrown everything at him, haven't they? Guns and bombs and assassins, and he's still alive, left to die because his own fucking body is rejecting him.

"I want her." The whore he picks out has brown hair and brown eyes and Fuu's mouth. Even her little tits.

He might be dying, he might be weak, but he fucks her so hard she screams and goddamn means it. In the morning he moves on, kicking up dust and spoiling for a fight. Hangovers are hell even on dying men. Some puffed up fucking samurai bitches get in his face – five of them go down in minutes, it's a goddamn disgrace. Little shits like that shouldn't even be allow to touch a real blade, much less carry one.

They got money though, enough that Mugen thinks he might actually end up dying in comfort. On a clean futon in a nice inn, with a full belly.

The thought makes him sick.

Days pass, and he ends up in a little, hole in the wall sort of town. If he blinked he might have missed it, but he finds a tea house that smells like fucking heaven – he'd eat a goddamn shoe at this point, to be fair though – and is quick to go inside.

And suddenly, it's two years before. In the dimly lit interior of the tea house, he hears, "Fuu, order up!"

It is followed by, "Coming!" and fuck him running, but it's her voice. He'd know it anywhere. She's twirling around, red faced from the heat and maybe something else.

A hand on her wrist pulls her up short. "You didn't answer me," Mugen hears some little bitch say, some pretty fucking boy with long hair and big black eyes.

Women probably think he's handsome. Mugen wants to throw the fuck up, just looking at the prick.

"I'm working, Hayashi-san." She's not exactly coy, but she is flirting. Looking at this stupid fuck out from under those stupid fucking eyelashes, biting the corner of her mouth in a way that _still_ keeps Mugen up at night.

"Meet me tonight," the man presses, lowering his voice. "Under the bridge."

Mugen hears himself saying, "Yeah, fuck no," before he's across the tea house with a hand wrapped around the dude's wrist. He twists – the little fuck not quite screams – and Fuu shouts,

"_Mugen_!" half-horrified and half-ecstatic. She tosses herself at him, somehow wiggles under his arm and presses close, so close Mugen feels sick all over, sick and weak. "Let him go – come on, you big jerk, he wasn't bothering me. It's okay, really!"

"Bullshit," he grumbles, but with the way she's got an arm around his neck, combined with the sick look of fearful anger and defeat on this _Hayashi_ dude's face, makes Mugen feel...merciful. Which is, of course, a byproduct of the disease.

"Don't ever let me see you near Fuu again, you little fuck," he snarls, before promptly dismissing the bastard. He doesn't care that patrons are gaping at them, that the cooks have come out of the kitchen, that the owner is shaking a fan at he and Fuu and making rough noises that are clearly unfinished words. All he cares about is wrapping his arms around her waist and picking her up, making Fuu squeal as her feet leave the ground.

She's so fucking soft. None of his sharp angles. His fingers tremble, crinkling and wrinkling her kimono. Why the fuck didn't he do this before?

"Fuu quits," he announces, hooking an arm under Fuu's (absolutely fantastic) ass, proceeding to carry her out.

"Fuu! Fuu – someone help, get the police –!"

She's laughing, waving her hands over Mugen's shoulders. "No, there's no need! We're old friends! I'm sorry, but I have to go. We haven't seen each other in a very long time and – Mugen, would you stop and let me explain –"

"No time," he answers, and then they're outside. He takes side streets and alleys, knowing all the attention he'd draw with a woman very nearly slung over his shoulder. Uptight pricks.

"Where have you been?" asks Fuu, feet swinging idly. She curls a hand around Mugen's neck, and he almost trips. Goddamn it.

"Here and there," he grunts. He begins to trek up a weedy foot path, into the woods. Fuu will want privacy for this, though he would have her on a busy street. She wouldn't appreciate it, though, and if there is one thing he learned from traveling with and then being without the bitch, it's he needs to make her happy if he wants to get anywhere.

"I've only been here a few months," says Fuu, and suddenly she's twisted around enough to bury her nose in the side of Mugen's head. She makes a noise that isn't a sigh and isn't a groan, but some bastard of both. "I can't believe it, you smell just the same. Always a little bit like the sea."

This isn't as far inside the shelter the trees as he wanted to be, but goddamn it, it's good enough. Mugen drops Fuu on her feet, not roughly but not gently either, because he's not fucking gentle and he won't ever be, and that's the goddamn end of it. But he ain't going to rough her up, either.

He's got her pinned between his body and a tree, and she's looking up at him with bright eyes and quirked lips. Her kimono is purple, and Mugen misses the pink one with it's stupid flowers, but she looks older. Bigger tits, wider hips; not a lot, but more than before.

Gasping, the sickness washes over him, harsh pangs in his chest and stomach. Who ever thought his mind would kill him? But he thinks about the time lost, how he didn't get to measure the growth of her body with his hands, and for a moment he is frail.

"Mugen?" asks Fuu, her voice gone high and worried. He used to find it annoying, but now he's got some kind of sick response to it. Fuu worries and he gets a hard on, probably because he knows her touch is coming. How many times would he hide in the bushes and jerk off, teeth gritted tight together so he wouldn't wake her up, thinking about her hands cleaning wounds on his belly, his thighs, his back and legs. She would bend over and her kimono would gape – she always complained that she could never get her obi tight enough – and he could see the swells of her breasts. White as clear sky clouds, and sometimes her bindings were gone and there were pink, _pink_ nipples, pink as her kimono, begging for his tongue.

"I'm sick," he admits on a rough gasp, tugging at her clothing. "I'm dying. Now shut up and let me fuck you."

"Dying – _what_!?" She reaches a pitch heard only by animals and to the too-keen eared Mugen. Hands grasping his haori, Fuu is suddenly all wild, angry fear. Tears make her eyes shine, and her nose turns red.

Goddamn it. _Crying_. How the hell is he supposed to fuck his bitch if she's _crying_?

"Mugen, what's wrong? Have you seen a doctor? What is it? We're going to a doctor right _now_, okay, you're not going to die, I won't _let_ you –"

He kisses her, _hard_. There's blood in his mouth. His or hers? Doesn't matter, not really. Fuu fights him, or tries too, but then she's got her hands under his clothes and is palming his sharp hips, and she's kissing him like a starving woman set before a free meal.

"You're killing me," he groans against her jaw, down into her neck. He's fighting with her obi – mother fucking piece of shit, _why the fuck won't it come loose_ – more than half wild. She's going to be covered with marks from his mouth, his teeth, his whiskers, and the thought of it makes the bottom drop out of his stomach and his knees shake. "I get so fucking weak when I think about you, like I'm going to fall apart. You stupid bitch, you goddamn little _whore_, you're killing me and I can't stop – fuck _yes_, finally –"

Hands full of soft flesh as the obi finally unknots and unwinds, Mugen feels insane. So much like blood lust, and yet not. Fuu moans, and he is weakened; she shudders as he tears away her bindings, and he is made strong again. None of it makes sense, none of it: not his reactions, his thoughts, his need, and this is the disease that has been eating him alive since they last saw each other. No, since far before that, when she hiked her kimono nearly to her hips and played in the cold ocean water.

"Infected me with something," he's growling into her breasts, dizzy as her nipple pebbles against his tongue. "Cursed me. Fucking witch. Open up, bitch, let me – _feel_ – fuck Fuu, you're so _wet_ –"

She's whining, twisting against his mouth and hands and the sturdy press of his body. Her kimono is catching, probably tearing, on the tree bark, but Mugen doesn't care. He'll kill a hundred fucking samurai and buy her a new one, or five, or fucking twenty. Not that he's going to let her wear them, no. Little bitch is going to be naked and on her back or knees or belly, pussy ripe, dripping, and waiting for him.

How did his shorts get jerked down? Did he do it, or did Fuu...? Doesn't matter. Her thighs are soft against his hips, quivering, and he's rucked her up against the tree, is holding her in place with the strength of his wiry arms. Her hand is between them, slipping in her wetness, lining their bodies together.

Mugen pushes forward violently, stars exploding behind his eyes and his breath escaping in a rough shout. She's the tightest bitch in the world, soaking wet, and he's wanted to be here for so long – and he can hear her sobbing, but it's not pain (or at least not entirely), because her nails are digging into his back and she's wriggling and gasping, "Mugen, Mugen, _Mugen_," like his name is some kind of prayer or something.

He fists a hand in her hair and fucks Fuu, fucks her so hard that soon he has to kiss her to keep her screams from calling up 'rescuers'. Swallowing shrieks and moans and his name, always his name, Mugen allows her shoulders to drop back against the tree so he can slide rough fingers between them. Feeling himself sinking into her, pulling out slick and wet, it fucking drives him crazy.

But when he sets a knuckle against that little place and begins to roughly rub, when Fuu clamps down like a vice grip and turns red, every muscle pulled so tight he thinks she's going to rip herself apart, he completely loses himself. She's trying to scream but can't, can't pull enough air in, so she's croaking and squeaking, body tensed and taunt while her cunt spasms and grips and fights each upward thrust of Mugen driving into her over – over – over – over –

He cums so hard it it's like dying, except without the Crow Men. It's like being pulled apart and put back together and reborn, all so quickly that he hasn't got the time to process it all before he's hurled back into his body. Gasping for air, arms so tight around Fuu's waist that he knows she'll have more bruises, he can just hear himself babbling into her hair, "You stupid bitch, you've been killing me – can't ever leave me again, if you try I'll kill you myself – fucking need you so much, I'd rather see you dead than without me –"

Fuu holds him tight, despite her trembling, her tears wetting his skin and her mouth wet and soft as she whispers _I love you, I love you_, into his neck.


	2. Writer's Choice: Disease Reduex

**A/N: This is my favorite one, so far, because apparently I like hurting myself. **

**Disclaimer: I own nothing. **

**096. Writer's Choice: Disease Reduex **

The midwife won't come.

Mugen stirs the fire so it's high and hot, hot enough to burn out the chill of a changing season and sickness and death. Fuu is writhing on their futon, nothing but skin, bones, and swollen stomach. She's half dead and trying push out a life, and Mugen knows the two things won't work together, that something is going to shatter and he can't accept losing either of them.

The sickness came on sudden and swift, devastating half of the village and leaving the rest terrified. Mugen doesn't get sick; he so rarely does, and it drives Fuu mad that when she's got the sniffles and is drinking herbal tea, he can walk through the snow in bare feet and geta and never so much as sneeze.

Yoichi was supposed to be the same. The boy was born fat as his mother and screaming like a hellion, so fucking sturdy and strong that Mugen discovered the meaning of pride the first time he held him. Four years. Four _goddamn_ _**years**_, and Yoichi was eternally plump and healthy.

Until he wasn't. Until fever burned him up and he shit himself to death.

Mugen dug the grave, high up on the cliff above their cottage. Dug it and buried their boy, all on his own, because he had no one else. That was fine. It's always been just him, at least until it was him and Fuu and Jin. But Jin's two days away, running his own dojo, married and as fucking sour as ever.

Fuu couldn't help him. He wouldn't ask her to, even if he could. He buried his boy and didn't cry and went back to the cottage, tried to force water down his woman's throat and didn't bother with prayers, because gods don't listen to men like him.

Then she went into labor, and Mugen kissed her palm – roughly, as he does many things – before bolting from their home into the village.

"Stay away," the midwife had shouted their her barred door, no doubt shivering in fear. "I don't want to die like that!"

No one will come. _No one_. So Mugen – promising to slaughter them fucking all if Fuu dies, and then himself because he's not living without her, not ever again – he returns home alone, and remembers.

Women birthing in shacks and on streets and in the trees, it happened all the time on the island. Dead eyes in sweating faces, squatting or lying back or standing, pushing out bloody wet babies. Some alive. Most dead, or as good as. Animals, horses and cows and dogs. And Fuu when Yoichi was born.

The midwife had tried to keep Mugen out.

"I'll slit your fucking throat and fuck your corpse before I'll leave her like this, bitch," he'd snapped, propping Fuu against his chest and _glaring_. "Now shut the fuck up and help her!"

That had taken hours. Fuu wasn't quiet – she never has been – she'd screamed and howled and clawed at her knees and thighs, practically curling into a ball all in the effort to force out their fat little boy. Then he'd came, screaming and red and so goddamn angry that Mugen had _known_ this boy was _his_, his in a way that went beyond having planted seed in Fuu's stomach.

She'd cried, but his woman cries so often now. Especially when pregnant. Weeps at the drop at the hat. Exhausted and sweating and (beautiful) disgusting, she'd held out her arms and took their son, crying so hard snot dribbled down her face.

"We've got a boy!" she'd wailed, and Mugen kept on holding her, terrified and thrilled all at once.

But there's no point in thinking too much of that, now. Not now. Maybe not ever, because he thinks of their boy and sees that open grave, and the old kimono wrapped around his little body, and the way the dirt sounded as it hit cold, dead flesh.

So no. He won't think on it too much.

Instead he wonders how much blood is normal (a lot, but this is _too much_), and wishes Fuu would scream.

"Stupid bitch," he snarls, watching her weak body struggle. "_Fight_, goddamn it! I can't save you from everything!"

He wishes he could. But swords and sheer determination can't help this. So he sits between her legs, not praying, leaving only long enough to put more wood on the fire, to get clean cloths, to heat water. The first time took hours, but this takes an _eternity_. The sun sets, and the moon rises. The moon sets and the sun rises. The moon rises again, and finally Fuu _wails_ – thin, weak, pained – and out slides a tiny, limp little thing.

It's a girl. Her face is gray and her lips blue, the cord around her neck; Mugen curses and unwinds it, clears her mouth and nose with a finger before hold her in one hand (she's so fucking _tiny_), slapping her back and bottom. He wraps her in warm cloths, and rubs, rubs and rubs and rubs.

"Breathe, you stupid brat," he snarls, teeth bared and everything gone fuzzy and blurred. He isn't crying, it's exhaustion. Of course it is. "Come the fuck on and _breathe_!"

She never does.

Fuu doesn't wake up, not through any of it. Though _she_ breathes, and Mugen is distantly thankful for this.

Mugen cleans up – puts the afterbirth in a cracked bucket, along with blood soaked towels and cloths. He's going to burn them, because he can't stand the sight. They're disgusting. (They remind him of his failure.) He wraps the dead thing (his little girl) in warm fabric, swaddling her tight, and tucks her into the crook of his arm.

He buries her with Yoichi, high up on the cliff. He'll make grave markers, or pay to have them carved. Fuu will want to come here, he knows it. She'll light incense and pray and cry. There's no point in it – the dead are gone, and have no fucking clue what the living are doing – but Mugen does many things for Fuu that he thinks are unnecessary. This will be one of them.

In the end, Fuu lives. (The midwife does not: three months after Mugen buried his daughter, that tiny little thing with fluffy black hair and hazy dark eyes, the woman is murdered by bandits on the road. Fuu doesn't question Mugen when he comes home with bloody hands and a dirty sword. He offers no answers, and they don't speak of it again until they're both old, and the village has long forgotten that horrible year.)

Jin and Shino come. The women sit around the fire and cry over lost babies (Shino has given Jin three, and none have lived past a few breaths). The men hide outside, uneasy with tears, rather braving the cold and a sky that threatens snow.

"Fuu still appears weak," says Jin, arms hidden in his gi. He doesn't look at Mugen, and that's fine.

"Looks a lot fucking better than before," is his answer, and it's true. She was a fucking skeleton, with thin, yellow skin stretched tight over her bones. Now at least she has some softness to speak of.

Somehow, for some fucking god awful reason, they go to the cliff. Grave markers rise up over the stormy gray ocean and it's white caped waves, sentinels of lives not lived.

They stand for a long time, guarding over nothing more than remains and memories.


	3. Smoke

**A/N: I think we can all agree that if Mugen had access to them, he'd ride a motorcycle and look sexy as shit doing it.**

**Disclaimer: I own nothing.**

**056. Smoke**

He's smoking, leaning against a motorcycle in a leather jacket and heavy boots, looking like a stereotype lifted from a movie. Blue tattoos are on his bony wrists, going far enough up to be hidden under his jacket sleeves.

"Nice skirt," he says, smirking around his cigarette as Fuu walks past with her nose in the air and butterflies in her stomach. He reaches out, tickles the hem of her skirt and the soft skin of her bare thigh, and she slaps his hand away.

"Never gonna happen, loser," she snaps, and he's grinning at her from under a wild mop of dark hair.

"Thank God," he drawls, "I like my women with a little more up top. You're as flat as fucking board, bitch."

She shoots him the finger, and he makes an obscene licking gesture with his tongue – Fuu's stomach drops out and she has to focus _hard_ not to trip as she makes the step onto the sidewalk.

While doing her shopping, Fuu wonders why she doesn't start going to a regular market, instead of making lots of little purchases at a stupid, smelly gas station where loser gansters hang out. But she thinks about the extra time it would take, and accepts she doesn't want to bother with it.

Fifteen minutes later, walking out with three heavy bags swinging from her hands, Fuu jerks her nose back in the air.

"As tight assed as you are, I bet your pussy would fucking break a lesser man's dick." He's grinning that stupid, leering grin. And he laughs – _laughs_! – when Fuu stumbles.

"Mugen, you disgusting jerk!" Even though she's shouting at him (the few regulars pumping gas or walking inside ignore them, as this is a daily occurrence), Fuu is having a hard time focusing because _holy shit_ his jeans are really, _really_ snug, and he looks so _yummy_ straddling his bike like that –

He kicks the bike to life, rolling it slowly backwards with his feet. "Luckily, I'm not a little bitch. Catch you later, Fuu."

"Go fuck yourself, Mugen."

(That night, Fuu does everything possible to avoid it – she thinks of actors and musicians and that cute guy that always comes into the cafe – but when she's gasping into a pillow and pressing down on onto her own fingers, she's saying, "Fuck yes, Mugen, _yes yes, yes_** –**" while white lights and his ugly, stupid smirking face flickering behind her eyelids.)


	4. Nocturnal

**A/N: Because I really think no one ships it Fuugen more than Jin. Come at me, bro.**

**Disclaimer: I own nothing.**

**087. Nocturnal**

When Jin sleeps – really, _deeply_ sleeps – he drools. Right this very moment the sides of his mouth are wet and shiny, and though Fuu knows he will wake within a split second if he sense something unusual or threatening, for now he is so relaxed and out of touch with the world that he looks young. Innocent, almost.

It's adorable.

For whatever reason – and honestly, Fuu doesn't know what it could possibly be – Mugen is _pretending_ to be asleep. With his back to the dim fire and an arm under his head, his body is lax, nearly limp, and his breathing is slow and even. _Too _even.

Mugen sleeps as he does everything else; wildly. Instinctively, be it the hard ground or a plush futon, he ends up on his back. Legs and arms akimbo, one hand on his stomach or – worst of all – partially shoved down his shorts. His mouth gapes, he snores loud enough to wake dead men... and yet he, too, is somehow innocent at those times.

She thinks of Mugen as a boy, all hair and sun burnt skin and wide mouth, sprawled out on a dirty floor. Alone – more alone than Fuu has ever been, even after her mother died.

It makes her heart hurt.

Attempting to avoid the pain in her chest, to maybe fix it, she leaves her bed roll. Jin doesn't move (he's grown far too used to her nighttime trips to the bushes), but Fuu can see the way Mugen's muscles tense, just for a moment. It's gone so quickly that she could have imagined it, but she's spent too many nights unable to sleep and staring at him from across a dying fire to not be aware of his details.

Blanket clamped firmly in two hands, Fuu quickly picks her way across their little, make-shift campsite. Once this is done, she quickly folds herself onto the edge of Mugen's camp roll, working hard to squirm under his blanket.

"What the hell?" he asks too loudly for the night. By some miracle, Jin doesn't wake.

"Shhh, not so loud," orders Fuu, poking him hard between the shoulders. "Move over, there's a rock under my hip."

Despite having his head twisted in a truly awkward angle in his attempt to see her, Mugen obeys. Fuu gives him a pleased smile, flipping her blanket on top of his, so they are covered by both.

"What's your fucking problem, bitch?"

Jamming her (frigid) toes between his bare calves, Fuu does what she's been longing to do for a completely ridiculous amount of time: she cuddles Mugen. Like her mom used to do when Fuu was little, scared or lonely or simply cold. She slides an arm around his waist, buries her cold nose in his back, and answers – with a voice muffled by his few layers of fabric – "I'm cold. Now shut up, I'm also trying to sleep."

"Why the fuck don't you go get all touchy-feely with fish face, then?" Mugen may be snapping like a wounded animal, but Fuu can feel him straining against relaxation. Given enough time, and the warmth of their bodies heating the space under their blankets, he will be soon be comfortably resting.

"Because I don't want to," is Fuu's answer.

Not a terribly long time later, Jin opens his eyes while quietly rubbing his wet mouth. _Finally_, he thinks, narrow mouth fighting the usual impassive line it takes to form a long, incredibly fond smile. He watches his friends sleep; Mugen trapped under Fuu, the both of them a tangled lump under the covers protecting Jin from seeing where hands may have strayed by now. It is peaceful and warming.

If anyone deserves happiness, it is these two morons. But of course he is the one to lead them to it; they would be lost without him, wouldn't they?

In the morning he wakes earlier than normal, just to make sure the _second_ thing Mugen lays eyes on is Jin's smug, knowing expression. The first, of course, is Fuu's sleeping face. She drools in her sleep, just a little, and the corners of her mouth are wet and shiny.


	5. Criminal

**A/N: Uploading from my phone, sorry if the formatting is screwy. This one just kind of... Happened. Thank you all for the reviews, I am getting over a fairly serious illness and they help me SO MUCH. Make sure to let me know what you think about this new one. I'm still on the fence about it.**

**016. Criminal**

They say a girl always falls for a man like her father, but to Fuu her father is a turned back and a thousand footsteps, a faceless ghost that can't even be made solid by the old photographs her mother kept. She knows what he once was: an honorable man, a loyal son, a kind husband, a doting father, a keeper of old traditions. Or that's what she's told by Mother, who is, at best, an unreliable source of information. Her memories are rose tinted and clouded by blind devotion.

Once, and only once, Grandfather spoke of him. "You want to know about your father?" For the first time in Fuu's memory, Grandfather appeared old. He was a big man, tall and broad and fierce, with thick gray hair and heavily calloused hands. His students called him sensei and he always wore old fashioned clothes, like they were hundreds of years in the past and still in Japan. On that day there was a heavy sadness in his eyes, and something Fuu would later come to recognize as guilt.

"Yes," she'd answered in Japanese, because Grandfather rapped her knuckles or the backs of her thighs with a shinai when she dared speak English inside their home. "I don't remember him well."

"Of course you don't. You were so young…" He'd sighed, heavily, as though he was in physical pain or maybe just exhausted. Sitting seiza with a back straighter than a yard stick, it was difficult for Fuu to look at Grandfather and see his pain or tiredness. He was a rock, and she was too young to understand how the water washed him away ever so slowly. "Everything came easily to Kasumi; he was handsome, incredibly intelligent, charming, and a gifted swordsman. He was also easily swayed, cowardly, and never understood what it was to truly work at anything. It's why he left the family… it wasn't easy, anymore."

Grandfather spoke the hard truths others blinded themselves to, a fact Fuu was aware of even as a child. His words carried the weight of honesty, as brutal as they may have some times been. She hardened her heart to her father on day, and vowed that she would never love anyone like the faithless, cowardly man that abandoned his family when times became difficult.

When Grandfather becomes truly old and incredibly frail, they go back to Japan. Fuu thinks she should feel a loss at leaving America, the land of her remembered childhood, but she's always felt more like an untethered balloon than a person with roots. In Kyoto the corners seem to hold memories of a time long gone, and sometimes Fuu scans crowds looking for something… something impossible. A dream she used to have: a tanto, a long road, steel glinting in sunlight, and the scent of the ocean.

She never finds it, which is no shock. Still, it's a habit to keep looking.

Grandfather dies. Jin takes up the school, another man to keep the old traditions alive, to not let their swordstyle be forgotten. He trains businessmen and children and famous actors, is called by big name directors to help chorograph fight scenes. "It's what I must do," he says of his work, but there's a melancholy about him that breaks Fuu's heart. He feels it, too, the pull of somewhere – sometime – else. It was cruel that he was born in this time, this place: Jin is a man of the past, curelessly flung into the modern world where he'll forever be outside looking in.

"You couldn't possibly find a better husband," Mother quietly encourages at night, brushing Fuu's hair out.

Once, when she was just barely a teenager, Fuu thought she loved Jin. They kissed a few times, when Grandfather brought them on trips back to Japan, but it was very wet and terribly boring and eventually he adjusted his glasses and quietly declared, "They're going to be disappointed in us."

"Yeah," Fuu answered, "I guess so."

"There's no man better than Jin." This is a true statement, and one Fuu's not afraid to make. "But he's not for me." Equally true, and one she hopes to eventually convince Mother of.

Representing the family, Fuu gets drug along to Okinawa by Jin. "It's good that we appear together," he keeps telling her, but she doesn't understand why. He was adopted, so what does it matter if she's there or not? Besides, she's a mediocre swordsman at best; probably because she has no real interest in getting all laced up in protective gear and beating people with sticks. Maybe she's a barbarian, but what's the point if she can't really knock her opponent out? Yeah, sure, skills or whatever, but come on – and you know what else she's never understood? Shouting where you're going to hit the guy – really? Wouldn't that be suicidal in a real fight?

"Hey bro, I'm gonna knock you upside the head now, that cool?"

"Yeah man, while you do that I'm gonna whack you in the stomach. Go!"

Men are so _dumb._ Because really, it was created by men for their man friends, so they could go stab their man not friends in the face and take their stuff. Fuu's got better things to do with her time then learn how to (not really) kill people.

Wandering on the sea shore, pondering the uselessness of her being there, Fuu's distracted gaze passes over a man. It comes back, focus sharpening. He's got chin whiskers, wild hair, crazy eyes, and big blue tattoos. The grin he's wearing makes her think of a tiger: toothy, hungry, and outside the scope of human morality. He's squaring off against some big American guy, one whose buzz cut and bearing suggests military. She can't hear what they're saying, just the tone of their voices as the wind carries the sound down the beach. Feet coming to halt, Fuu wraps her arms around her stomach and simply watches, curious.

The military guy shoves the other one, fingertips on a shoulder. To Fuu it looks like a warning, a sign to back off, but maybe it's a taut. A come and get it move; guys really go in for that sort of thing, she's noticed.

It's like watching a hurricane appear out of nowhere, seeing that guy fight. He explodes into wild action, moving so quickly and randomly that she hasn't got a hope of keeping up. He's punching, he's kicking, he's on his back, he's fucking spinning, and that army guy is getting the shit kicked out of him. The sand beside the dock beings to soak up blood, and Fuu swears she hears the sound of bones being snapped with the crazy one stomps on his victim's chest.

"Hey!" Waving her arms, she breaks into a run. "Hey! Quit it! He's not getting back up, okay? You won, knock it off!"

The gaze that looks her down, up, and back again is leering. She hates guys that look at women like they're blow up dolls, as though they exist only to please men. "The fuck are you, bitch?"

It takes a great force of will not to punch him in the face. "None of your business: that's who, asshole. But you leave this guy alone, now. He's not going to give you any more trouble."

With a roll of his dark eyes, he fluidly shifts his weight, so he's leaning closer. It's obvious that he's trying to intimate her and it sort of works, because he looks like some kind of raw, starving dog. "A bitch like that couldn't give me trouble in the first place, kid. But he's damn sure going to come in and pay off the money he owes – isn't that right, Private?"

The private gurgles his agreement.

Scathing paints Fuu's words and body language, now. "What are you, some kind of mobster?"

"You got a problem with it if I am?"

"None of my business what a loser does with his life."

"That's right because you're so much better than me. Ever had to work for money in your life, princess?" His words are cruel and biting. She's immediately infuriated, mostly because he's seen her for, what, three minutes? Three minutes and he can zero in and tell Fuu a truth she's been avoiding for a long time. (That maybe she's more like her father than she wants to admit, enjoying the easy road and all the gold it's lined with.)

"You don't know me! You know nothing about me!"

"And you know nothing about real life, so get the fuck out of my face."

"You – you – you fucking jerk!" Fuu shrieks at his back as he stomps away, the geta he wears with his baggy shorts clacking strangely on the wooden dock.

Three days later they meet again, on the same beach, and she learns his name – Mugen. Two days after that they're bickering about music when some guy grabs her ass and asks Mugen how much it'd cost to borrow her for a while. She's never seen so much blood come from one person. They have sex at his place, on the floor, and Fuu screams because it's never been so brutal – so good – in her life. A week more and Jin finds out, tracks them down to have this Jin-esque hissy fit all over the dirty little apartment Mugen lives in. He even brings a sword, like what? He's gonna slice Mugen up?

Thing is, Mugen's got a sword, too. A weird old thing that's a little of this, a little of that, and heavy as shit… but it sings when he swings it. They knock down a sliding door and bust out a window, end up fighting in the street and the police get called. Fuu bails them both out.

"You're sleeping with a criminal," Jin tightly hisses, like he's got a bokken shoved up his ass. There's a look on his face like he's stepped in something disgusting.

Meeting his gaze directly, she explains it all in three words: "But he's honest."

A few years later, Fuu meets her father. He's mild, sickly, quiet, and ashamed – and he's nothing at like her fiancé. It only makes her love Mugen more.


End file.
